I’m looking forward to discussing a bit of epidemiology in my Microbiology class on Tuesday. I’ve been looking at the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service website and a package of case studies obtained from them and I think we can manage at least some of the broader questions without losing valuable time that I am itching to discuss immunology.

While researching, I came across this site by Google that uses search engine terms as a method for tracking flu worldwide. The data is used to create a map like the one shown below.

Previous years’ information yielded these data illustrating spikes in flu during the winter months last year.